Quotes from Cynthia Bass

We're all being left out one way or the other. The survivors miss being heroes. The heroes miss being alive. The only ones not left out are the ones who never went in.

The only element still surprising was how rapidly Sherman was moving: for whichever direction I looked, he'd been here already, burning and emptying out. The smoldering wood made the air smell cruelly like Christmas.

The life of a soldier seemed like a climb up a stairway without any stairs, only the wooden supporting spine of preagreed ritual. Step away from that spine and anything might happen -- to you, by you.

I felt entangled now: this March, this South, this war, history. History could not possibly let the South get away with slavery; history would not possibly let us get away with what we were doing to the South. Somehow or other, we'd both have to pay.